The Onion A.V. Club
These shows are recommended by The Onion A.V. Club staff at http://www.avclub.com
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CHICAGO UNDERGROUND COMEDY, Featuring Chicago's Top Alternative Comics!!
Every Tuesday 9:00PM @ Beat Kitchen (map)
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
February 16, 2012Subjective as it is, comedy still often proves to be a fundamental element of why people get up every day. more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012Glasgow outfit Mogwai could easily be pegged as a band that takes itself far too seriously. Its songs—some of which can take more than five minutes to build to any sort of head-bobbing tempo—more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from Chicago Reader
June 08, 2012The rapid and welcome erosion of genre boundaries at every level of pop music has produced some compelling stylistic collisions that are all the more fascinating for how unexpected they are. more at chicagoreader.com
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Lincoln Hall & Schubas present a 93XRT show: Laura Marling
Tue. 06/19 | 8:00PM @ The Athenaeum Theatre (map)
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012Though she’s just 22, Laura Marling’s done some pretty notable stuff in the British folk scene, including releasing two excellent solo records—2008’s Alas I Cannot Swim and 2010’s I Speak Because I Can—winning Best Female Solo Artist at the 2011 more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012The California hardcore punk-rockers of Ceremony pride themselves on being digitally antisocial. Without a MySpace, Twitter, or Facebook presencmore at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012Singer-songwriter Laura Burhenn (formerly of Georgie James) helped shape musical collective The Mynabirds back in 2009, when she and producer/musician Richard Swift (currently of The Shins) more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from ChicagoInnerview
May 31, 2012Startling. Piercing. Soulful. These are the words that frontwoman Laura Burhenn’s Nebraska outfit triggers within moments of their 2010 debut. Unafraid of challenge, The Mynabirds mimic their avian namesake with soaring songs and brave voices. Valiant LP What We Lost In the Fire We Gain In the Flood has proven an excellent warm-up for their recent sophomore release Generals. More astounding, however, is the audacious nature of their creativity. In a 2-year interim, this group has greeted holiday shoppers with anti-commercialism ballads via a provocatively Southern sound paired with intelligent lyrics. more at chicagoinnerview.com
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Cloud Cult, Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps
Sun. 06/17 | 8:00PM @ Lincoln Hall (map)
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Featured Review from Oh My Rockness
June 11, 2012Minneapolis’ Cloud Cult have been around for awhile now, but only recently have they broken out of their “cult” (no pun intended) status and started receiving widespread recognition. more at ohmyrockness.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012Cloud Cult has taken on more polish and windy orchestration over the past few years, keeping touch with the genuine, ambitious yearning that leader Craig Minowa used to channel through a more chaotic patchwork. more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012If you really want to mind-fuck and/or empower your 6-year-old daughter for the rest of her life, treat her to a night of glorious abrasion courtesy of Sarah Silverman. more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012There’s no better way of making love to your inner geek than spending the evening with troubadour Jonathan Coulton. The man slings ditties about science and technology the way most rockers navigate sex, drugs, and fame—more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012Nick Offerman and his Parks And Recreation character, Ron Swanson, seem inseparable, mostly because they are the same person in many ways. But the musical-comedy revue American Ham, on tour now, more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012John Oliver is a Daily Show correspondent who is British, and in less capable hands, that’s all that a British comedian who lands a gig on The Daily Show would be. But during his tenure,more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012Aziz Ansari’s decision to trade his previous onstage apparel of hoodies and polos for a series of sharp designer suits is partially a play off the faux-suave title of his debut stand-up CD/DVD, more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
June 08, 2012Patton Oswalt has been on a hot streak as both a comedian and an actor for the past several years: ringmaster of the Comedians Of Comedy tour, voice of the cartoon rat in Ratatouille more at avclub.com
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JUST FOR LAUGHS Janeane Garofolo, Kyle Kinane
Wed. 06/13 | 11:00PM @ UP Comedy Club (map)
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Just For Laughs: The Nerd Show
Pete Holmes and Brian Posehn and Brent Weinbach and Mike Lawrence
Pete Holmes is just one of those guys you want to succeed. His short films are clever. His appearances on VH-1 don’t grate. His onstage presence is relaxed, natural, and almost immediately likable. And above all, his comedy is smart and funny. Though his most visible—or invisible, as the case might be—job is as the voice of the E-Trade baby, Holmes is perhaps best known in comedy circles for his podcast, You Made It Weird, which features the comedian riffing with and interviewing other notable stand-ups. Impregnated With Wonder, Holmes’ 2011 stand-up record, was named one of the year’s best by The A.V. Club. Here, Holmes hosts The Nerd Show, and with Brian Posehn, Brent Weinbach, and Mike Lawrence as guests, offers a version of The Nerdist focused more on comedy, though no doubt with its share of nerdy essentials. more at avclub.com -
Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Like the good Gen-Xer that she is, Janeane Garofalo rose with grunge in the ’90s. And though she may have doffed her flannel since then, she’s remained a consistent performer. She’s found her way reliably into film and TV (most recently playing FBI agent Janis Gold on 24) and, thanks to her pointedly political perspective, hosted a talk show on Air America. Garofalo always makes time, too, to prowl the stage, notebook in tow, to deliver meandering monologues about politics and pop culture that always find their way to punch lines eventually. more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Amy Schumer’s blend of wholesome, girl-next-door good looks and edgy comedy has earned her a rapid rise in the comedy world. Her comedy embraces a friendly, conversational tone that makes it all the more shocking—and funny—when she suddenly veers into a taboo area or attacks a member of her audience before skillfully segueing back into more relaxed, easygoing material. Schumer smartly exploits the contrast between her mock-ditsy persona and the exquisitely worded nastiness of her material on her debut album, Cutting—No. 9 on The A.V. Club’s list of the best comedy albums of 2011—which would ring false if not so finely crafted. It’s an impressive album for any comic, much less such a relatively green one. more at avclub.com
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Conan - Live Taping 1 @ The Chicago Theatre
Mon. 06/11 | 4:00PM @ The Chicago Theatre (map)
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Just For Laughs: Conan
Conan O’Brien
more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from flavorpill
June 04, 2012“Radiohead’s 1997 album OK Computer catapulted the band to iconic status; the Oxford boys’ superhuman creativity, well-documented in the film Meeting People Is Easy, then drove them to take more chances with subsequent releases Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief. more at flavorpill.com
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Featured Review from Chicago Reader
June 03, 2012Radiohead surprised its fans in February of last year by releasing its eighth album, The King of Limbs (XL/TBD), without warning. more at chicagoreader.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Before One Direction there was The Jonas Brothers, and before them, N’Sync and New Kids On The Block. Before all that, though, there was New Edition, whose faces graced the walls of every little girl with a passion for R&B and new jack swing in the ’80s. Hits like “Mr. Telephone Man,” “Candy Girl,” and “Cool It Now” might not be as popular as “Hangin’ Tough,” but they’ve withstood the test of time better, and are almost charming in their kiddiness. more at avclub.com
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Deer Tick, Turbo Fruits, Scott Lucas & The Married Men
Sat. 06/09 | 8:00PM @ Metro (map)
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Featured Review from flavorpill
June 04, 2012“Rhode Island’s Deer Tick are back with a new album, Divine Providence, and EP, Tim, and they’re playing their none-too-subtle country twang for audiences to experience firsthand. Singer/songwriter John McCauley’s conversational, lovelorn lyrics overlay all-American finger-picking and more raucous instrumentationmore at flavorpill.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Deer Tick’s by-the-book rockabilly is mostly notable for the band’s age (very young) and hometown (Providence, Rhode Island—not exactly the South). But what Deer Tick lacks in originality, it more than makes up for with foot-stompin’, hootin’ and hollerin’ energy, not to mention the gravel-smeared voice of baby-faced frontman John McCauley. more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from Chicago Reader
June 03, 2012Young country star Miranda Lambert has always had a thing for songs about getting even with men who’ve done her wrong—she called her second major-label record Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and on her fourth, last year’s Four the Record (Columbia), she sounds as badass as ever singing “Mama’s Broken Heart.” But there’s much more to Lambert than revenge— more at chicagoreader.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Brad Paisley’s good looks and squeaky-clean image, including his ever-present spotless white Stetson, might seem to contradict what works on the country-music charts, but Paisley is huge—and exceptionally clever, too. Paisley’s slick records avoid the glasslike sheen of so much modern country, and his songs toggle between punning critique and heartrending ripostes. more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from Chicago Reader
June 03, 2012Currently there seems to be a lot of demand for sunny, punky, female-fronted bubblegum bands, but in certain corners of the world—including my household—that sound is never not in style. Local four-piece Swimsuit Addition list several totally made-up genres on their Bandcamp page more at chicagoreader.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Mauro Remiddi has played in bands and recorded in studios—and as he approaches 40 years of age, he’s decided he’s done with both. Now operating under the Porcelain Raft banner, the former head of jangle-poppers Sunny Day Sets Fire keeps things simple on the Gone Blind EP: his wisp of a voice, a circular guitar line, a bare minimum of programmed percussion, and a lot of ambient static. In melodic sense and voice, Remiddi is eerily reminiscent of solo-era John Lennon; and Gone Blind plays more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from Oh My Rockness
May 29, 2012Porcelain Raft plays pretty, low key mood music that makes you feel sad (but not too sad) and nostalgic and probably bittersweet about past things known only unto you. And it’s all the work of one Londoner (by way of Italy) named Mauro Remiddi. He used to be in that band Sunny Day Sets Fire (which I thought was one of the most derivative band names of recent years… but who asked me).
more at ohmyrockness.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Austin’s Scott H. Biram has been a critical darling for some time now, picking up rave reviews for his blazing backwoods-style reinvention of ’30s Delta blues. In 2005, Bloodshot Records re-released an expanded version of his commendable debut, The Dirty Old One Man Band, followed by 2006’s Graveyard Shift, which came out to equally fine notices. more at avclub.com
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Andrew Bird: Fever Year
Thu. 06/07 | 8:00PM @ Gene Siskel Film Center (map)
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 31, 2012Concert films tend to be hit or miss for fans and non-fans alike. Fans generally want to get in their artist’s mind, while non-fans want to get acquainted with an unfamiliar act. Classically trained Renaissance man Andrew Bird has plenty of fans, but is still unknown to many. more at avclub.com
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The Kickback, Slow Parades
Wed. 06/06 | 10:00PM @ The Whistler (map)
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 24, 2012The Kickback
Also Playing: Slow Parades
more at avclub.com
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Featured Review from The Onion A.V. Club
May 24, 2012As a member of the Portland trio Menomena, Brent Knopf is used to engineering a more experimental sound than most of what’s labeled “indie rock” these days. His penchant for blending pop songs with far-flung arrangements also birthed his solo project Ramona Falls, which, on the recently released Intuit, consists of more at avclub.com
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- Bands
